Broken Pieces
by frangiblepsyche
Summary: A mashup of things I've started and won't continue and things I plan to continue when I have actual motivation. Mostly USUK, one CanUS so far, but still listed as USUK for the majority of the fics. All are raw, unedited, and not finished. Enjoy. (:
1. Chapter 1

**This was part of something I started but never finished. I plan to finish it, but...eh.**

A deadly commotion was sprung up outside of my apartment at around three o'clock in the morning. Crash after crash, I assumed the apocalypse had started, or something thereof. At least, that's what I hoped it was. I knew in my mind that I would be called bright and early to my office, and I would be meeting the imbecile that would surely take over three months of my precious time and sleep within a week's period.

Even so, I didn't have the will to look. This sleep pattern I had grown accustomed to over the last year simply stripped me of any patience I once had. (Which wasn't much.) Even sleep made me exhausted. My clients in America were even bigger heels than the ones back home in England. I couldn't escape the idiots surrounding me. But I do love their money.

Oh, indeed, I do.

At the thought of money, I came up upon an interesting fact: I was still in my work attire; my tie was tied and my shoes were laced. In fact, my satchel band was still loosely hanging in my hand. My shirt, wrinkled as all hell, was still buttoned to the second highest button. This lead me to realize another interesting fact: this wasn't my apartment. One more interesting fact? There was another person next to me in the bed. A man.

"F-... Francis, you fucking moron, wake the hell up before I knock your teeth out-! Wh- Look at this! Get up!" With a horrific expression and a shove of the Frenchman, (whose hand was resting uncomfortably on my ischium, awkwardly enough.) I shot out of the bed and quickly straightened my clothing. Who wants to be seen in the same bed with their biggest competition in a wrinkled suit?

Well. I guess appearance matters for a man raised in a high-class family in Europe. This fact, later proven by none other than Fran-shit Bonne-fuck, was what I assumed to be the reason I landed my job in the capital of the United States. As the man behind the counter at the coffee shop said, "Bitches love that British shit with the voice and the tea."

"Arthur, mon ami, please calm down. You're overreacting; we went out for drinks and you passed out." Francis' immediate reaction was substantially less violent than mine. Not that I didn't expect it. The fact that he was grinning pissed me off to no end. Remind me: why do I talk to this fool?

When I collected my things, I, as expected, tried to hurry out and (try) to leave this mess behind, but to no prevail. Francis was conveniently blocking the only way out, and I felt rage boiling up, threatening to explode.


	2. Chapter 2

There was a point and time in my life, at what point is still unknown to me to this day, where I truly realised how I felt about my life. Not what I thought about it, but how I /felt/ about it. I had always had such a feeling, but it was at this unknown point that I finally had a word for it. This left me terrified.

It wasn't that I had any particular negatives in my life that I couldn't let go of, because I was very lax when it came to what people so cleverly referred to as "holding a grudge," but, however, there was something in the back of my mind that always bothered me.

I couldn't put my finger on it.

And so I ignored it, for the most part, and at times I was able to forget about it. It always came back in short bursts, though, and this bothered me. It left me confused, and confusion is something I very much loathe.

Order made me happy. I like it; it made me comfortable. As long as any situation was in order, I could figure out how to fix it. And even if there was a particular situation that wasn't already ordered for me, I could always order it and then solve it.

But most importantly, order didn't deceive me. Order couldn't deceive me even if it wanted to, and perhaps that's why I always felt so comfortable around it. I loved routine, and this only made this foreign point in my life easier to find, even if I wasn't searching for it.

There was always sort of a silence in my life. Although I was a kid of very few words, and I still am today, I always had a nagging in the back of my head - a second one - that was completely silent. It never distracted me, but when I would be in my bed late at night, or I would be in the library reading, I would think of this nagging force. It never said anything, and that's what I hated about it. It was always just there.

My parents moved to America for my father's work during my thirteenth year, a senior as I was told it was called in America, and I absolutely hated it. It wasn't necessarily anything in particular about the country that I could name, perhaps the diet I was forced to transition to of greasy meat slabs and ranchy lettuce, but this country was just so…not home. It was probably at this point that I realised how I felt about my life.

I felt alone, and that terrified me.

Now, as I sit here in my silent car, I realised how terrifying this really was.

But it wasn't a bad thing. It felt scary, but also it felt calming. I often found my mood reaching its peak, and then immediately dropping down to simply nothing, a numb feeling, before it started back up again. When this wave of emotions started again, it only lasted a few minutes. And after everything let down, it was the calm after a storm. This happened frequently.

I smiled at myself for these foolish thoughts. I was surely crazy, or something thereof. I had always been called crazy, perhaps because I was always enthralled by magic tricks, but I was never the first to deny it. We all have a little crazy inside of us, right?

Right?

—

I had been called upon by my parents on a foggy Tuesday morning to receive the news that my car had been broken into.

"Broken in? That's not possible - I would have heard an alarm. I lock my car," I told my father defensively as I stood barefoot in front of my car, shivering. My hands rubbed circles in my arms as I tried to keep warm. I contemplated running inside to grab shoes. I dismissed these thoughts. "There's no way anyone could get in."

"It seems that's where you went wrong," my mother said slowly, watched my father carefully as he inspected the car for anything that could be broken. He ran his fingers along the hood.

My car was a piece of shit anyways.

"Just leave it alone," I commented irritably. "It's fine, nothing is broken." Nothing appeared broken, at least.

Fortunately, my parents did leave it alone after declaring that nothing was broken. However, when I hopped in my car the next day to perhaps sort though some records at the music store down the road, my heart leaped a little.

Somebody stole my car radio. I never knew what to think of it.


	3. Chapter 3

September, 1939.

Poland was, to say in the very least, angry with Britain and France. Although the support of his people - much related to that of young Confederate soldiers destined to surrender in 1861 - would have been enough to push back Hitler's Reich at the earliest stages of invasion beyond the borders, he simply /couldn't ignore the other problem at hand./

The young men, he observed, were exuberant in their speech. While in Warsaw for private business, he watched at citizens crowded cafes and the twenty-five theatres that inhabited the cities - the baroque beauties that made it a self-proclaimed "Paris of eastern Europe" - chatter excitedly about the war. They were excited to fight?

Their language intrigued him. Although Polish was like his home, his entire existence - he loved his language - these men were different. Their accents, their mix of Russian and Polish, some Lithuanian, the mix of voices hurt his head and made him dizzy. These soldiers were young. These soldiers didn't know war. These soldiers were inexperienced, these soldiers were just little boys who still used /Gone with the Wind/ as a bedtime stories. These men, these boys, were barely eighteen. They were barely men. Poland couldn't take it. He spent the rest of the afternoon sick at home, Lithuania crouching by his side has he held his face over a putrid bucket, crying into his own vomit. He missed his meetings.


	4. Chapter 4

He didn't understand. It was that simple - he didn't understand. He had done everything right so far. He loved him, so where did he go wrong? He tried.

He didn't want to see him, but… His fingernail scraped the mast and he winced. /But/ he had to, and that was the hardest part. He winced again, tapping his thumb in a dull rhythm against the mast. He sat in deep thought, pushing his eyebrows together and pushing his lip out in a slight pout, his head down.

How would the boy react? Would he cry and scream? Would he beg to come home? Rather, how would he, himself, react? He couldn't afford to take him back, and now with his plethora of emotions becoming priority over his business, he had to conjure foreign reverence for deities he did not know existed to have some relief.


	5. Chapter 5

I'm not the type of bloke to judge you for something you like or do. If you want to sip your whisky in the corner alone, why should I stop you? If you want to read erotica while babysitting children, by all means. If you want to puff your fags while they incinerate London, more power to you! But also, fuck you.

I counted forty-nine air raids in London alone since September, and as the colder months rolled around, I had a slight feeling they weren't done. Birmingham and Liverpool were already suffering, with only six air raids counted, so what the Germans were doing was clear - fuck over Britain and maybe we won't have enough resources to beat the shit out of you.

But no, that's not how we work. We're tough, yeah?


	6. Chapter 6

We wanted more.

I guess I didn't think there was much more to give - but how could I complain with the outcome?

Well, I could complain. I had every right to - but I never did. I was always thankful. That's not what my parents wanted to hear. Though they supported my decisions fully, they wanted me to be upset. I couldn't do that, I think.

I think.

Now thinking about it, I should have been upset. I'm pretty tough; I don't deal with all that depressing nonsense. That was a bad mistake on my part.

Being upset would have made this easier.

I knew I preferred dudes when I was five years old. I was pretty observant as a kid, despite what you might want to believe. I didn't think it was normal that I ignored Ashley Kopczyk when she was always trying to sit by me during snack time. I didn't think it was normal that Shannon Kelly, a girl from the first grade, would always give me hugs during recess and I'd push her away.

I noticed, however, that it was also abnormal to notice the length of Matthew Estes' eyelashes. I noticed that it was abnormal to notice how long and graceful Tommy Ugalde's fingers were and how Anthony Spizziri's collarbone had a mysterious, playful shadow on it in the right lighting.

Really, what does that even mean?


	7. Chapter 7

**This isn't USUK, buuuuut...everything else is!**

The date is left forgotten in the snowy vast land near the intersection of Harlow and Arlek that was once named North Dakota - a small town named Nien. The roads are empty except for one lone Jeep that sits at the end of the ivory blanket, watching as a scarecrow. However, this man is not looking for crows. This man is not in North Dakota. This man sits and waits without a pulse and a welt in his head in the land of the New Russian Federation.

The sea of white that fell for miles in the direction of south held new beginnings for those that have not left to safe havens that the Clockwork does not yet know about. Trees are scattered where the gently plowed road peters out into thinning tunnels through the mountains that border the small town. All around is white - white is everything this land has known.

To the east is one road cutting straight through the snow. A dirt road, one barely wide enough to fit a smaller sedan (not that there were many around anymore). To the left, just past halfway of the visible road, sits a single baby blue house. The picket fence is stained black, and the windows are smashed in. Red-stained curtains are blowing softly in the breeze; the white door lays smashed twenty yards down on the road. To the west, nothing can be seen. There is no road; there are no people.

To the north, however, is a pandemonium. Black stacks pierce the sky in rapid succession, a mass of bodies crowd around one small section of chain link fence that stands twenty, thirty feet in the air. Many men, women, and children gather around in dark clothes and begin to beg for anything to help them survive - food, water, shelter. A single match. A scarf, perhaps.

The expanse of the prison in which divides the New Russian Federation and Canada stretches from the furthest point west on what was once Washington state to the last point of outstretched land that was once Maine. It is a simple black wall that lies slightly south of the Canadian border - only 100 feet to avoid border control issues.


	8. Chapter 8

I have an issue with loneliness. I knew this to be true all throughout my childhood, but I never experienced this distant feeling of loneliness as I did when standing in front of this nostalgic, cliché façade. Even thus, it was mild and I knew if I told anyone they would think me nutters, and as such I decided to keep to myself. Suddenly I wasn't so lonely.

I didn't learn that from the start, though. My family _was_ a very busy one, I daresay; my brothers always caused a raucous whereas I was quiet and preserved. I think my mother wanted a female child and treated me as such, mostly because she dragged me shopping and to her salon and hairdressing appointments and took me to the bookstores when I asked. These things my brothers refused to do, and instead helped my father with his automobile shop.

My father tried countless times to set me up with his friend's daughters and such when I turned sixteen. He had always questioned my lack of women around me; claiming I was a handsome bloke, he forced a girl named Addison on top of me. I had no choice but to say no - was there anything I could do? I didn't want to let the poor girl think I thought she wasn't pretty or thin enough. I'm a gentleman, after all.

As much as I resented it, I consented to her selfish desires and put on a show as if I were


	9. Chapter 9

_Alfred,_

 _There's something funny about goodbye notes, don't you think? It's like a plea for help, and in some aspects that could be respected, but why write one and leave it on someone's doorstep? Isn't that where the line of "this is real" and "save me" meet ends? I would think the reality is finding it in someone's pockets._


End file.
